5 Fresh Tips to Help You Reduce Financial Vulnerability and Improve Financial Confidence for Women Going Through Divorce
Reducing financial vulnerability and improving financial confidence during a divorce can be overwhelming and emotional, but you’re not alone! Check out these 5 Fresh Tips for reducing financial vulnerability and improving financial confidence for women going through divorce with divorce financial strategist, Rhonda Noordyk.
Rhonda Noordyk is the founder of The Women's Financial Wellness Center, which is committed to empowering women going through the financial aspects of divorce. They offer private group experiences and 1:1 consulting. Their signature process has helped hundreds of women improve their confidence and relationship with money so they can ask for what they want - and get what they deserve.
As one of Rhonda’s clients says, “Rhonda is so awesome! What a blessing she has been to our daughter and our whole family! She has taken the financial part of this decision and made it very understandable! We couldn’t have done that without her! And seeing her collaborative with my daughter's attorney was wonderful!”
You can learn more about Rhonda Noordyk on her Fresh Starts profile.
5 Fresh Tips to reduce financial vulnerability and improve financial confidence for women going through divorce:
Negotiate! This is so important. I think a lot of times we as women want to kind of step back from negotiating, but I think negotiating is a skill that we naturally have. So, this is a great opportunity for us to do that. And I think when we have the right strategy, the right format, and a little bit of support right behind the scenes, we can do it. So I just want to encourage you that you can and should negotiate.
It's not too late to develop financial confidence. I think it's really easy for women to feel guilt or shame. Like, “I didn't spend much time investing in, you know, knowledge around the finances, my husband took care of it.” It's not too late to develop that confidence. Really, the formula for financial confidence is knowledge. So, having the knowledge of finances, plus the experience that builds the confidence, if we have the knowledge, without the experience, it's theory. If we have the experience without the knowledge, it's trial and error. So we gotta get those two working together. But it is possible. I say women are really smart. And they make smart decisions when they have all of the information that they need. So it's definitely not too late. It is also important to create a full and joyful life for yourself that other people may want to be a part of.
Awareness is the first step to changing your mindset around money. Changing your mindset around money is possible! One of the things that we'll often do is have our clients take an assessment on their financial personality to just to find out no judgment, right? Are they an avoider? Are they a collaborator? Are they looking for that person to be able to collaborate with? Are they an analyst? Do they love the numbers and spreadsheets or kind of their love language? Or are they an initiator somebody who's really had that knowledge and experience that they're showing up in a space that they have that experience, but it is possible. And the first again, the first place that I have started and do start with my clients is changing our mindset around money. One other really important thing around this is understanding our values. What is it? That is important to us? And if we can kind of develop those top five things? Is it respect? Is it you know, not having any debt? Is it being responsible? Is it honesty? Is it trust? What are the things that are important to us as it relates to money, because I think especially for people that are going through the divorce process, just taking that time for some awareness will help guide and direct them as they go throughout the process.
Build your hype team. Man, this is a big one, right? Back in the day, I think people thought, hey, I'm just gonna have an attorney and they'll be able to navigate through it. And unfortunately, those folks are the people that I talked to 20 years after their divorce was over that says Rhonda, where were you? I didn't feel like I had an advocate. I didn't feel like I had somebody who was actually empowering me around the finances, and I'm still struggling today. From the decisions I made 20 years ago. Let's not do that anymore. So, the divorce team really needs to have, I believe three components. A core team is legal, financial, emotional. And then we can have an ancillary team that can be a forensic accountant, a business valuation expert, a classic car evaluation expert, we can build on the team depending on the need. But that core team is really important. Why? Because we really have three divorces going on synonymously we've got the legal divorce, got the financial divorce, and we've got the emotional divorce. And those are all separate and they all take time. And they all unfold at their own pace. So, having the divorce team is really, really important. And I have found that women in particular fare better when they have the right team of people. And I say the right team, right, you got to make sure you've got the right team for you, you've got the right team for your situation, and that you have a team that's really going to be advocating for you.
A budget is an important part of the planning during and after the divorce process. I always say budgets are not sexy. They're not glamorous, nobody likes to do them. But, it is part of the process. One of the very first things that we do with clients is help them with a budget. Why? Because every single question that they have related to their financial picture comes back to the budget: should I rent or buy a home? Should I lease or buy a car? What should I do about health insurance? I mean, all the questions, and we go back to the budget, the question always is, do I budget for current? Or am I budgeting for future? And the question is great, and the answer is both. And so plus, the other part of it is it helps with negotiations. So it helps with, hey, what am I asking for? How much do I need to have come in and support to be able to meet my obligations? Everybody likes to think sometimes that divorce is black and white? Oh, and we're just going to put the numbers in, let's do a spit something out. But I would tell our listeners, that everything is negotiable. At the end of the day, that's just the reality, right? And so when we have a solid budget, we have been successfully able to help our clients walk away with higher levels of support because we could, we could articulate clearly what was wanted and what was needed from that perspective. So budgeting is so important.